


A Break with Tradition

by thestarsapart



Category: Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, Origin Story, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsapart/pseuds/thestarsapart
Summary: Bridget and Frances Owens were defying expectations from the day they were born.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Break with Tradition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olive2read](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive2read/gifts).



**1693**

Once upon a time, on an island near a small village a day’s ride from Boston, a woman named Maria delivered her baby by herself, unaided, in a house she built by the sea. She had been alone on the island for months, so very alone, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t. 

Maria looked down at the baby girl in her arms, who gazed solemnly back up at her. The baby looked like her father, Maria’s cursed lover, red-haired and blue-eyed. This was not her fault, of course, but it didn’t help Maria as she stared at the child, waiting for the rush of maternal emotion that her own mother had often spoken of. All that she felt was exhaustion and relief. She and the baby had been locked in a painful battle for hours, and now it was finished and they could both sleep. Perhaps when they awoke, Maria would feel the love, or at least affection, that she had expected to rediscover when she finally laid eyes on her daughter.

But what was this? A strange stirring inside her… was this the first hint of the unbreakable bond between mother and child that she had been promised? Maria quickly discarded this notion as the flutter clenched into another contraction. She laid her baby down into the bed of soft reeds that she had prepared, and braced herself to deliver the afterbirth, which she hadn’t expected to be so painful. 

By the time Maria realized that she was delivering a second child, the first was shrieking and Maria had run out of curses for her former lover, his wife, and the town full of people who had turned their backs on her.

  
  


**1918**

It was nine generations before another Owens woman was surprised to discover that she was having twins. Not that there hadn’t been any twins born since Maria’s daughters. In fact, Florence Owens had a twin sister herself, and Rose was right by her side as she labored in the upstairs bedroom of the house by the sea.

“Momma?” called a little voice from the doorway.

Rose laughed, wiping Florence’s damp brow before stepping out in to the hall to sweep up the little girl peeking around the door.

“You must leave your mother to her work, Claudia,” Rose told her, carrying her back to her own bedroom. “And in the morning you will have a little sister.”

Claudia wrinkled her nose as her aunt tucked her back into bed. “How do you know it won’t be a little brother?”

Rose tucked a stray lock of dark hair behind Claudia’s ear. “Because we are Owens women, and Owens women are always blessed with two daughters. Sometimes both at once, sometimes not.”

Florence cried out from down the hall. The contractions were coming closer together, now. Rose bent to kiss her niece on the forehead.

“I need to go help your mother now. You be a good girl and stay in bed.”

“I wish Daddy was here,” murmured Claudia, sleep slurring her words.

“I know, sweet girl,” Rose said as she switched off the bedside lamp. “But tomorrow you can help me write your daddy a letter to tell him all about your little sister. Think how happy he will be when he opens his mail at the army camp!”

Claudia was fast asleep by the time her sister was born, a tiny perfect girl with red curls that were no surprise to her mother and aunt. What  _ was _ a surprise was the head of darker hair that quickly followed.

“Twins, Florence?!” Rose laughed as her sister goggled at the two babies in her arms. “ _ Three _ daughters? Where’s your respect for tradition?”

“Oh dear,” Florence sighed. “Something tells me this will not be the last time that these little ones will ignore the rules.”

“Have you got a spare name picked out?”

“Well, Hank and I decided before he was drafted that we’d name her Bridget, after his mother. I knew she would have the same red hair. But  _ this _ one...” Florence kissed her unexpected baby’s nose, “You might have to help me with this one.” 

“Maybe we should ask Claudia in the morning,” Rose suggested.

“Not unless you want a niece named Daffodil, or Tumbleweed. Or Birthday Cake! That’s what she wanted to name the cat.”

Rose sniffed. “Nothing wrong with a good flower name. Daffodil has a nice ring to it.”

“Well, she doesn’t need a name tonight. Just some milk, and a good sleep. We’ll come up with something in the morning, before we write to Hank.”

But in the morning Florence woke to the sound of a death-watch beetle chirping, and Claudia found her sobbing when she crept into the room to look at the babies. The littlest one went unnamed for two days, until the telegram finally came. 

Rose read it aloud, Claudia curled on her lap. “What’s in-flu-en-za?” she asked her aunt, as her mother fed the babies and wept.

“It means your daddy got sick at the training camp, and he won’t be coming home,” Rose explained.

“Oh,” Claudia said. “He won’t get to meet the babies?”

“No, child,” Rose said, stroking her hair. “I’m sorry to say, he won’t get to meet the babies.”

“Oh.” Claudia looked at the paper clutched in Rose’s hand, the tiny letters marching across the page, still unintelligible to a girl who had only just started to learn the alphabet. “Can you read it again, Aunt Rose?”

Rose glanced at Florence, who hadn’t taken any notice of them, who had known for two days that her husband was gone.

“All right, love. One more time: ‘We regret to inform you that your husband, Private Henry Frances, was stricken with the influenza while training at—”

  
  


**1930**

“Claudia… Claudia!” When she opened her eyes, there was a cat sitting on Claudia’s chest, but the whispered voice from the dark was her sister’s.

“Jet?” Claudia mumbled, sitting up and sending the cat scrambling. “What are you doing in my room?”

Bridget hovered at the foot of Claudia’s bed, Frances at her side, as always.

“Birthday Cake says there’s a visitor downstairs,” Franny said, pointing at the cat, who was cleaning her paws and maintaining a studied air of indifference on Claudia’s dresser.

“And Aunt Rose told us not to come down when there were late visitors, but we thought maybe you could…” Jet waved a hand in a vague circle.

Claudia sighed. “All right, come close. But keep quiet! They’ll know what we’re up to if they hear you two giggling up here.”

Her sisters climbed onto her bed, tucking their cold toes under their nightgowns as they leaned close. Claudia took a deep breath and held it, sketching a pattern in the air above the bed as she reached inside herself for the power that was always simmering beneath the surface. She exhaled slowly and felt her hair lift in the gentle breeze wafting through her bedroom door, bringing the sound of murmured voices from downstairs.

“That should do it, Mrs. Dorset,” they heard their mother say. 

“Mrs. Dorset? The baker’s wife?” Frances whispered. She and Claudia both turned to Jet.

“She and Mr. Dorset are trying to have a baby,” Jet explained. “But they’re having trouble, because Mr. Dorset… isn’t doing it right? It’s like he wants to, but something isn’t working?” Jet shrugged. Her magical strength lay in knowing secrets, but most adult secrets were still beyond her understanding.

Claudia nodded knowingly, although she hadn’t a clue what her sister meant. But an older sister had to maintain her reputation somehow, and the twelve-year-old twins thought that their sixteen-year-old sister knew everything there was to know about the world.

“Three drops in his coffee in the morning, and he’ll have no trouble rising to the occasion at night,” Rose said downstairs.

“Here’s your payment, then,” Mrs. Dorset grumbled. “And you won’t be telling anyone in town about this, right?”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” their mother replied. “You have a lovely night, now.” They heard the back door close and then creak as their mother leaned against it. “Bitch,” she muttered, and Jet and Franny each slapped a hand to their mouths to stifle their giggles.

“Florence!” Rose tutted.

“What? I didn’t say it to her face.” Dishes clanked and glass tinkled as if someone were cleaning up the kitchen.

“I thought we were going to try being nicer this time,” Rose said. “I thought you were going to ask her for a bit of chocolate for the twins’ birthday next month.”

“As if she would ever help us. You hear what they say about us in town, what they’ve said since Hank died.”

“Things are different now. A dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, and people are struggling. The townspeople have been coming together to help each other through. Maybe it’s time we reach out to them, contribute our gifts.”

Silence fell as their mother considered her sister’s words. “No… No, I can’t do it. They can have our gifts, I’m not withholding them. But I’ll take their money in return, as little as it’s worth these days. And we’ll get through this decade just as Owens women have for the past two hundred years: with the help of each other, and no one else.”

Rose sighed. “I suppose you’re right. We don’t need anyone else. I just wish…”

“Oh, Rose, I’m sorry,” Florence said. “Of course I don’t mean we shouldn’t  _ ever _ talk with the townspeople. I know you and Adam have been…”

“Adam?” Frances whispered, looking quizzically at Jet.

“The fishmonger!” Jet answered gleefully. “The one with the big black beard? That’s why she keeps coming home smelling of fish!”

“I’ve broken things off with Adam,” Rose said downstairs. “I just can’t risk… I couldn’t go through what you endured with Hank. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to!” their mother said. “Maybe the curse only strikes once in a generation…”

“No, you heard Mother explain it when we were girls. Ever since Maria, any man that dares to love an Owens woman is doomed to die. It’s all right, Flo. Adam will find someone else. He’ll live a long, happy life. And I will be fine.”

Claudia waved her hand in the air again, dismissing the spell, then leaned back against her pillows.

“Is that true?” Frances asked. “Are we cursed?”

Claudia nodded. “Mother and Aunt Rose explained it to me last year. It’s true.”

“So that’s what happened to Daddy?” Jet said. “He died from loving Mother?”

“He died of the influenza,” Claudia said. “But yes, it was also because of the curse.”

Frances and Jet digested this for a moment while Claudia thought about Rose and Adam. What would it be like, to love someone so much that you’d be willing to put up with the smell of fish and a scratchy beard to be with him, but would be so concerned with his happiness and health that you’d be willing to let him go? It all seemed terribly romantic to her.

“I can’t  _ wait _ to fall in love with a man,” Claudia sighed.

Frances and Jet exchanged glances.

“I don’t understand what the fuss is about love,” Franny said.

“I don’t understand what the fuss is about  _ men _ ,” Jet replied.

  
  


**Interlude**

For a little while, the three girls lived happily ever after. Claudia fell deeply in love with a man named George who was charming and romantic and just as deeply in love with her. They had two daughters: a dark-haired girl named Gloria who took after her mother in looks but was bolder and wilder than Claudia could ever remember being, and two years later, a sweet and gentle redhead that they named Regina.

Frances worked her way through the rest of the young men in town, but never the same one twice. When Claudia asked her, scandalized, why she couldn’t just pick one and settle down, she explained that she was trying to protect those nice boys from the Owens family curse, but in fact she was just terribly bored by the idea of having only one man in her bed for the rest of her life.

Jet was terribly uninterested in the idea of  _ any _ man in her bed, but she and the minister’s daughter were caught kissing under the willow tree down by the docks more than once. The minister’s daughter was sent off to a women’s college in Boston, and Jet was left behind, heartbroken.

“At least she’s alive,” Franny told her after crawling under the bedcovers where Jet had been huddled for two days. “Imagine if she’d been a man instead. You might be at her funeral right now. Instead you can write her letters whenever you want, or go see her in Boston.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Jet moaned miserably. “You’ve never even been in love.”

Franny rolled her eyes. “Want to hear a secret? Don’t tell anyone, now.” She leaned closer until they were nose-to-reddened-nose. “I’ve loved them all, every single one! And a few of their sisters!” She waggled her eyebrows, finally eliciting a laugh from Jet. “The trick is to not stick around long enough for them to love you back. Now come on, we’re going to get out of this bed and go play with the nieces. They never fail to cheer you up.”

But even for Owens women who know better than to let a man fall in love with them, tragedy is never far away. Rose and Florence were felled by a fever that swept through the town, a fever their herbs and spells could not touch, and they died on the same day. The war that had been ravaging Europe finally reached the shores of their own country, and George was drafted the next month. The house was haunted by his absence and by Claudia’s tight, grim smiles as she assured her daughters that Daddy would be just fine. 

The town grew quieter as the men left to climb aboard ships and airplanes and tanks, and the women left behind eyed the three sisters with unease. Anything foreign or unusual or different was seen as suspect, and although Claudia seemed respectable enough, with her two girls and her brave soldier husband off to war, Frances and Bridget refused to conform to expectations. The whispered gossip and cruel taunts that had plagued them since they were children only grew.

“Maybe we should reach out to them,” Jet said. “Show them that they have nothing to fear from us.”

“All they have is fear, these days,” Frances argued. “Fear of the Germans, fear for their husbands…” She glanced sidelong at Claudia, who was coaching Gloria on her candle-lighting spells and pretending to ignore their conversation. “...fear of witches, what does it matter? The town has been afraid of us for two hundred and fifty years; you really think they’ll decide to welcome us now, in the middle of a war?”

“Have you two ever considered  _ attempting _ to act like normal young women?” Claudia interjected. Frances rolled her eyes and began to open her mouth, but Claudia raised her hands, cutting her off. “I’m not saying you need to find nice young men and settle down; heaven knows there aren’t many of them left around. But there are a hundred things you could be doing to show the townspeople that we’re good, hardworking people, just like them. Go sell war bonds! Or get a job at the mill! Help the church quilting group with their Victory Garden! Don’t just sit around and complain that no one in town likes you.”

“Look, momma, I did it!” Gloria’s small face was lit by the golden glow of her candle, and Claudia beamed down at her.

“Very good, Glory. Now, go get your sister and get ready for bed.”

Frances and Bridget looked at each other as their niece kissed them goodnight and scampered off to find Regina. 

“I  _ would _ like to contribute to the war effort,” Bridget said.

“I could certainly be doing more for our boys in uniform,” Frances said.

“So… you’re going to sell war bonds?” Claudia asked suspiciously.

They did not sell war bonds. Instead, they went to Europe. Bridget drove an ambulance in France, and discovered that her gift with secrets was much more useful in an occupied country than it had been at home. She met a woman named Amelie and spent three weeks trying to hint at the fact that she knew Amelie was a member of the French resistance. When she finally just handed Amelie some hastily-scribbled battle plans that she had gleaned from a wounded German prisoner, Amelie kissed her and said, “Now this makes two reasons I am glad to have you here.”

Frances joined the USO and danced her way through Europe. By day she and her troupe performed for dozens or hundreds of soldiers at once, but by night she limited her audience to one (or sometimes two) at a time. She “danced” with privates and generals, nurses and pilots, civilians and spies, never the same one twice. Well… almost never. She was delighted to discover that one of the truck drivers assigned to her troupe, Ethan, shared her desire for a diversity of partners, and they occasionally teamed up for a group performance. It was nothing dangerous, really. Ethan was a free spirit, like her. And sure, she enjoyed his company during the day, too, and he sometimes liked to bring her little gifts of cigarettes or chocolate that he’d traded for with the other soldiers. But it’s not like they were in  _ love _ … is what she told herself the night she heard the death-watch beetle chirping outside their tent, the night before the day his truck rolled off an embankment on a particularly sharp curve.

Claudia heard the beetle, too, one night in early June in 1944. She wandered into her daughters’ bedroom and watched them as they slept. They didn’t look anything like their father; they took after her side of the family. Once George was gone, once she got the telegram, she would have nothing left of him. She closed the bedroom door gently, so as not to wake the girls, and sat down to write a letter to her sisters. 

By the time Frances and Bridget had rushed home to the island, their sister had died “of a broken heart” and there was no belladonna left in the house.   
  


**1944**

“She left us,” Jet said, staring at Claudia’s body, laid out on the bed where the three of them used to huddle to eavesdrop on the grownups downstairs. 

“She knew when we’d arrive; she must have timed it exactly,” Franny said, clutching Jet’s hand as they stood in the doorway of Claudia’s bedroom. “She left the girls with their teacher in town. There’s a note on the kitchen table.”

“She  _ left _ us,” Jet repeated. “She left us behind. Owens sisters don’t do that, we’re supposed to die on the same day.”

Frances finally stepped forward, brushing a lock of dark hair from Claudia’s still-warm forehead. “Well, our generation has never been one for tradition.”

“What are we supposed to do now? The girls— Gloria and Regina… They don’t have anyone else.”

“Well,  _ we _ can’t raise them,” Franny said. “We’d make terrible parents. I can’t cook to save my life, and you were going to go back to France after the war…”

“Amelie,” Jet sighed, then shook her head. “We’re all they have. What would we do, let strangers raise them?”

Frances looked back at Jet, a hardened look in her eyes. “We’re not all they have. They have their mother. I don’t care how broken her heart was, those girls need a mother and we need our sister. Get the book, we’re dragging her back here.”

Birthday Cake meowed from her perch on Claudia’s dresser.

“I don’t care if you think it’s a bad idea,” Frances said. “You don’t have thumbs, you don’t get a vote.”

They used powdered milk to draw the star on Claudia’s chest, wartime rationing preventing them from using the traditional white sugar. Neither sister flinched as they drove the needles into Claudia’s closed eyes. Both of them flinched when, moments later, Claudia took a deep, rattling breath and sat up.

Jet grabbed Franny’s hand, pulling her away from the bed. Birthday Cake darted out of the room, yowling. 

“She said ‘I told you so,’” Franny translated.

“Yes, I got that,” Jet said. 

“My girls,” Claudia breathed, standing, the needles still pinning her eyes shut. “Where are my girlssss…”

“Claudia?” Franny said, reaching one hand towards her sister. “Claudia, it’s us, Franny and Jet.”

The body of their sister turned towards the sound of Franny’s voice, head tilting.

“I need my girlsss,” it hissed. “Where have you hidden them?!”

“What do we do, what do we do?” Jet whispered.

“This is our mess,” Franny said. “We clean it up.”

The needles were a safety measure added to the resurrection spell generations earlier by an Owens witch who had made the same mistake. They anchored the spirit of the resurrected person in their body, preventing it from escaping into the world and attaching itself to a warmer, living host. A simple incantation to Hectate was all that was required to reverse the spell; much simpler than the broom circle required to contain an escaped spirit.

When it was over, Bridget and Frances laid their sister back on her bed and rearranged her limbs in a position of relative peace. Then they went into town, first to the undertaker’s, and then to the house of Lucy Evans, the girls’ teacher who had taken them in for the night.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your sister,” Lucy said when they knocked on the door and explained. “She said she wasn’t feeling well when she dropped them off… Is there anything I can do for you? Those poor girls…” 

Franny and Jet stood on her doorstep and stared at the woman, their nieces still playing happily in the background, ignorant of the news they had brought. It was tempting, so tempting, to just leave them there for the night, to lean on someone outside of the family for a change, to let the girls have one more happy night. But then Jet remembered the time Lucy had pushed her in the mud when they were both eight, and Franny remembered the rhyme about witches that Lucy had made up and taught the other girls at school when they were twelve. 

They shook their heads. “No, thank you,” Jet said. “We don’t need your help.”

Later, as the girls were walking back into their house on the island, tear-streaked faces framed by black and red braided pigtails, shining in the early dawn light, Frances and Jet held their hands tightly.

“We’re not your mother,” Franny told them.

“But we miss her, too,” Jet said.

“And we are your family, so we will figure this out together.” 

Regina and Gloria looked solemnly up at them. “You won’t leave us, too? Like Mommy and Daddy?” Regina asked.

“And Grandma Florence and Great Aunt Rose?” Gloria added.

Franny and Jet exchanged a glance as the four of them crossed the threshold.

“You’ve lost a lot of family,” Jet said.

“We have, too,” Franny added.

“But we were never much for tradition,” Jet continued.

“Although maybe it’s time to start our own,” Franny said, leading them all into the kitchen. “Who’d like some chocolate for breakfast?”

**Author's Note:**

> I had never seen this movie before, but I was intrigued by your prompts, particularly the focus on sisters (I am fortunate to have one, myself). I really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed coming up with this backstory for the fascinating Frances and Jet. I developed an additional theory while watching and re-watching the movie that the curse wasn't broken by "true love", but by the Owens women finally reaching out to the women of the town for help during the events of the movie, but I couldn't quite work it all the way in to this fic. I hope you enjoyed your gift!


End file.
